


The Maddening Desperation of a Million Why’s and What If’s

by antharyn



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 23:45:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14758565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antharyn/pseuds/antharyn
Summary: SPOILERS FOR MANGA CHAPTER 105.“Is this how you felt when Marco died?”





	The Maddening Desperation of a Million Why’s and What If’s

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILER FOR A MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH IN CHAPTER 105.
> 
> So this has been eating away at me since the last chapter came out and in all the fandoms I've been through, no character death has ever affected me this badly. I wrote this much like how one would rip off a band-aid--quickly and in one go to lessen the pain--so forgive me if it seems a little rushed. 
> 
> This is in no way related to my fic Caught in a Slipstream, which I am STILL working on btw, believe it or not.

They’re on the blimp—Armin’s parents’ dream turned into an arsenal for war. It took their best engineers months to minimize the way the pistons made the whole thing shake, but with how badly he’s shaking now, he might as well be back on the prototype when it was more of a death trap than anything else.

Sasha is gone, dead like so many of their friends and comrades, and despite years of pain and loss this one hurt deep. Sasha Blouse, the girl who stood out ever since the day she made all their heads turn toward the sound of noisy, careless munching on what had been the most nerve-wracking day of their lives at the time. Their best shot, their best rider, and one of Jean’s best friends.

You always think you have no tears left in you until you have a reason to start crying again.

“Is this how you felt when Marco died?” Connie asks quietly. The shorter scout is leaning against the wall with his back against the rampart, and it’s clear that it’s the only thing holding him up right now. All around them, the airship is silent. Within heartbeats, the victory they thought they had won has been taken away from them.

Jean closes his eyes when he hears that name. _Marco_. The boy Jean loved. The boy he’ll always love. The pain of that loss is a dull, heavy ache by now—one he’ll carry with him for the rest of his life whether he dies tonight before they can reach their shores or dies an old man living out his days in a world with no walls. He still remembers how it felt the day he found his best friend’s broken body in the aftermath of the attack on Trost. It was a white hot burn, like acid melting its way out of his chest—pleuritic, as if every breath he took was a knife stabbing right into his heart. That had been, and still is, the worst pain he ever felt in his young life, but this is certainly a close second. This is more painful than the day he found out who Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie really were.

“If it feels like you’d rather it had been you, then yeah,” he answers hoarsely, opening his eyes again and feeling them burn.

“It does,” Connie whispers. “I _do_.”

Jean looks sadly at his friend. Everything about the younger scout screams sadness and anger and a helpless frustration that he knows is almost debilitating. They’ve all been there, paralyzed with grief and the maddening desperation of a million why’s and what if’s.

Jean knows what Sasha was to Connie. How could he not? He saw the way they looked at each other since their days in training. It was the same way he looked at Marco and the same way Marco looked at him.

He’s glad Connie hadn’t been there when Zeke Yaeger said all this would be worth it. Sasha was the last good thing Connie had in his life.

“Fuck, Jean,” the younger scout grits out, finally sliding down to the floor in a careless heap with his head in his hand just like he did on the night of their first funeral pyre and every funeral pyre after that. “I was right there. I had her. We were _right there_.”

Jean curses and reaches out to grab him and pull him back up, but he can’t. He doesn’t have it in him. They're one of the most senior members in the Corps now and they can't be seen like this, but he practically collapses on the floor next to his friend, sharing his anguish. They _had_ been right there. A little to the right and it would have been Connie. A little to the left and it would have been Jean. Hell, that girl’s second bullet _was_ for Jean and for all his hesitation at taking even more human lives, Jean fired a bullet of his own with every intention of killing a child as if her death would have made a difference.

It wouldn’t have, though. It would have just added more blood on his hands, and there’s too much of that as it is.

Four years of rigorous training and preparation yet Fate still decided that Sasha would die tonight, and the rest of them would just have to go on with this new wound in their hearts until their own time came.

“Get up,” Jean says shortly. Whether he’s saying it more to Connie or himself, he’ll never know. “Damn it, Connie, get the fuck up!”

They _have_ to get up. There are those two kids they still have to deal with. There are more dead soldiers they have to account for. There’s a whole country after them that might already be on the move even as what’s left of the Corps makes its way back across the sea. Their actions tonight will have repercussions on a scale they can’t even begin to imagine. They have to get ready. They can’t sit and do nothing, not even for a minute. Jean loved Sasha like a sister and this will hurt for _years_ , but there is still so much more they needed to get done and they have to _get up_.

“We were going home,” Connie says in a choked whisper and Jean stops. Fresh tears well up in Connie’s eyes and start spilling down his cheeks. How can such as small person have so many damned tears?

Something breaks and Jean doesn’t know what it is, but it shatters into countless pieces around him and one of them starts sobbing in earnest. Jean neither knows nor cares who it is. It could be him. It could be Connie. Hell, it could be both of them, and it probably is, but it’s Connie who grabs his own head like he means to tear his own hair out as he screams: “we were all going _home_!!!”

Jean sobs (so it _is_ him) and closes his eyes.  He finally lets his tears fall as thoughts of how he'll never hear Sasha's bright laughter again or fight with her over leftovers or race with her on horseback consume him.

Really, after all they’ve done and all they’ve lost, who even knows the meaning of the word “home” anymore?

Beside him, the shorter scout, now half of a whole, sobs with his face buried in his arms. His uniform is soaked with blood from where he held Sasha as she died.

Jean throws an arm around Connie’s shoulders and doesn’t say anything because he knows from experience that nothing can be said or done to make this better. So he stays quiet and lets Connie have this.

They both stay on the floor for hours.

END.

**Author's Note:**

> My heart. My soul. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please let me know what you think. 
> 
> Good-bye, beloved Potato Girl. T_T


End file.
